Dalibor is a semi-canon Dragonriders of Pern site. No knowledge of the series or site is required to join; players of all experience levels are welcome here. Founded in 2008 on Proboards and moved to Jcink in 2013, Dalibor has been running for nine years.

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Autumn, 18th Turn, 11th Pass

Upcoming Flights/Runs:

Upcoming Hatchings:Copper LaanasuthCopper Zelsk

With two clutches hardening on the Hatching Sands the big question seemed to be: which will hatch first?

The answer came in short order with Copper Zelsk's clutch breaking shell moments before Copper Laanasuth's. With so many eggs surely the dual hatching offers hope to the numerous Candidates who fill Dalibor's ranks. Only time will show who will come away with a lifemate of their very own...

Dalibor was created by Bre, continued by Cathaline, and is now owned and operated by Ruin. Most of the information, rules, and graphics were made, compiled, or written by staff with credit given to those whose resources they used. Stock thanks to credited parties. All characters and posts are copyrighted to the members of the game. No material from this site should be copied in any way, shape, or form without utter express permission from the members and staff. All references to worlds and characters based on Anne McCaffrey's 'Dragonrider of Pern' series are copyright Anne McCaffrey 1967-2017, all rights reserved. The Dragonriders of Pern is registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, by Anne McCaffrey, used here with general permission for non-commercial purposes without monetary gain.

Personality:If most people who met Dijhay were asked to describe him in two words, those words would most commonly be “mad genius”. Dijhay focuses very heavily on his work, sacrificing most of his social life in order to improve his skills and work towards innovating the next big thing in Tannercraft, especially when it comes to armor. While Pern isn’t the most dangerous place, and Thread eats right through leather, Dijhay is convinced that, working with Smiths, he can create an armor that will have the residents of Pern able to walk safely through Thread-infested areas, freeing them from the fear of Threadfall. Whether such a thing is possible or not, Dijhay will not rest as long as more avenues of research exist.

Part of his “mad” reputation comes from his pet rock, which he named “Rochay”, considering it was the “child” of a rock and himself. While Dijhay is perfectly sane, and does not actually believe Rochay can speak or understand anything, he has found that channeling his habit of talking to himself into acting like he’s talking to Rochay leads people to believe him mad, which both helps prevent people from interrupting his work, and gives him an advantage during social interactions due to his false madness obfuscating his true motives and personality. Those who take the time to know him will discover a mischievous sense of humor and a caring heart behind his disguise as a brusque, condescending workaholic.

Appearance:Taller, but well built, standing at about 5’9” and 150 lbs., Dijhay is a fit man for his age, doing his best to keep active and not let age slow him down. His hair has already descended into greys and whites, only a bit of his original brunette coloration showing in his normally combed-back hair and thick, well-groomed beard. He keeps the hair on his head about as long as his ears, while his beard is trimmed to just touching his collarbones, the tips of his mustache swept outwards to points with a careful application of oils. Caramel-colored eyes peer out from beneath heavy brows, with a straight, pointed nose between them and flanked by high cheekbones.

He normally wears simple, basic clothing that is easy to clean and inexpensive to replace if necessary, though during the rare times he is not planning on working, he will wear clothing decorated with his own leatherwork: extremely intricate pieces of tooled leather worked into boots, the shoulders, button flaps, collars, and cuffs of cotton shirts, panels on the thighs of trousers, and belts, either made himself, or integrated into clothing he had made by other Crafters he bartered with. These works of leather art serve as both a testament to his skill, and allows him to serve as a walking billboard for his own crafts to attract potential buyers.

Another thing some will note about Dijhay is his distinct odor… while he bathes regularly, 37 years of tanning hides, and therefore being up to his elbows in vats of animal urine, at least once a week (if not more), has left its mark in the form of a very faint ammonia odor on his arms at all times, no matter how much he bathes. He is normally too busy to concern himself about it, but if there is some sort of important or fancy function he finds himself attending, he will usually douse himself liberally with cologne to mask the odor.

History:Born in Tillek Hold in 10i170 to Journeyman Beastcrafter Forthay and his wife Dijanna, Dijhay led a childhood surrounded by herdbeasts, learning about life and death at a young age when he was taught that the herdbeasts he saw walking the fields during the day would sometimes end up on his dinner plate that evening. In this, he also learned to respect the sacrifice they made, and truly began to see the world in terms of everything having a purpose.

Even as a child, Dijhay found he had a fascination for the soft skins left behind when his father slaughtered a herdbeast, and in 10i180, at the age of 10, his parents enrolled him into the Tanner Crafthall at Igen, the large supplies of leather the family made making them very friendly with the instructors therein. Dijhay proved himself an apt pupil, quickly taking to the techniques and tools of the craft, and at age nineteen, he walked the tables as a Journeyman.

Assigned back to his home at Tillek Hold, Dijhay searched for a specialty in his craft, and soon he latched onto his lifelong quest: To create armor that resisted Thread, giving the people of Pern the freedom to move wherever they wished during Threadfall. Taking advantage of all the spare hides he would get from his parents’ herds, Dijhay focused wholly on improving his Craft, ignoring his parents’ desires for him to get out and life his life.

It was during this time that, while chipping out slate for new stone knives for stripping hides (as he preferred to save his steel knife for paying work, using primitive [and free] stone knives for lower-quality hides he used for practice), that he discovered a beautiful geode… a geode that, at the right angle, sort of looked like a cartoonishly smiling face. Walking back into town, he began to playfully talk to the geode, giving it a name… Rochay… and otherwise simply entertaining himself on the walk back to his workshop. As he did, however, he noticed certain people he passed gave him strange looks, and as he grew into the habit of talking to Rochay as the geode sat on his desk while he worked on less mentally-intensive tasks, he began to hear rumors that he had gone mad, prompted by his already-existing antisocial reputation. Deciding to run with it, Dijhay took Rochay with him when he was called back to the Crafthall in 10i195 for a Turn to act as an instructor, crafting a decorative leather sling to carry him in, and using his “madman” reputation to both filter out people who weren’t worth establishing a more personal relationship with, as well as to keep his students on their toes.

After his Turn of instruction was complete, the Crafthall assigned him to the still-new Crescent Hold instead of returning him to Tillek, and though he missed the free hides he got from his parents for practicing, he quickly discovered in his new home that the dragons of nearby Dalibor Weyr hunted their own herdbeasts, and often left behind hides that were useless for most jobs, as they were covered in claw marks and tears. A conversation with some traders that travelled between the Hold and the Weyr found him with a new supply of practice hides, and the now 26-turn-old settled into his new workshop.

He lived through the next four Turns with little incident… he heard tales from customers and Apprentices about various happenings at the Weyr, but nothing that truly concerned him… Renegades this, large insects that, something about “pale folk” that lived in caves or some such nonsense. Dragonriders, while important, lived a life all their own, and unless they suddenly started feeding their dragons something other than herdbeasts, the attention he paid to them began and ended with the hides they provided him, and the occasional commission one of them brought to him, usually special-order flight leathers for a newly-Impressed dragonrider with a particularly proud and wealthy family. Dijhay’s skill in his craft, as well, continued to grow, and by the end of 10i200, few Holdguards in Crescent or nearby Western Hold sported armor that didn’t have Dijhay’s signature markings upon them, nor did they generally not have at least one story of his armor saving their lives at one point or another.

Finally, the Interval ended, and Dijhay witnessed his first Threadfall. Finally, he had a chance to directly study the effects of Threadfall on various materials, when a lack of such direct observations had stymied his efforts to create Thread-resistant armor all these Turns. The reality of Thread shocked him… he hadn’t believed the stories, the tales of Thread tearing through anything alive or formerly alive like wildfire, but there it was, acting just as vicious as the stories indicated. Instead of giving up, though, Dijhay merely took it in stride… a lot of his work was useless now, based on false conclusions, but now he had good, hard data, and he knew that somehow, he could accomplish what he’d set out to do all those Turns ago.

Three turns into 11th Pass, the white wherry plague hit. While Dijhay was unharmed, he did lose one of his favorite Apprentices to the illness before a cure was found. There was no time to mourn, however, as Dijhay always had work to keep him occupied… though he would never admit that his work was simply an escape, a way to avoid confronting the pain head-on.

The next six Turns passed without much fanfare, with Dijhay simply working to improve his skills in his Craft. Some of the Apprentices, as well as fellow Journeymen, asked him when he was going to go back to the Crafthall to attempt to gain Master rank, and he always had the same reply: Crafthall Masters gave up their craft in exchange for politics and paperwork. His interest was in perfecting his own talents, not attempting to understand some big picture and agree where the Craft as a whole should go, and in his opinion, becoming a Master meant abandoning self-improvement and getting meetings and paperwork and social maneuvering that Dijhay just found the very thought of exhausting. This same hatred of politics caused him to tune out whenever someone started talking about Holders or Weyrleaders. He saw no reason to care about anything they did… they were chosen for being born into the right family (for Lord and Lady Holders), or (as far as he understood it) happening to have a brain that a shiny dragon took a liking to (for Weyrleaders), so it wasn’t like they were chosen for any particular talent or desire for the job, no did his actions have any say on how they were chosen.

In the summer of the 9th Turn, however, Dijhay heard word that an exploratory expedition into the Northern Wastes had discovered, along with oil and other resources, an indigenous people they referred to as “Wastewanderers”. Unfortunately, Dijhay heard nothing else in regards to the expedition or its discoveries, though he was curious about the Wastewanderers, wondering if they had any unique leatherworking techniques or armors they made or used he could study for possible new ideas regarding his own work, as well as thinking about figuring out how to integrate cold into is Thread-proof armor as a possible solution.

Next turn passed with little fanfare, other than the word that the Candidates on Dalibor’s sands had begun to wear armor due to an increase in aggressive action from baby dragons after being hatched. Dijhay heard nothing but rumors regarding it, however, so he assumed they were handling the design and production of the armor with in-Weyr Tanners, and thought nothing more on it. While other things may have happened among the leadership of both Hold and Weyr, Dijhay did not concern himself as usual… if they came to him with an order, he’d gladly learn their name and take their marks, but otherwise had more important things to keep track of.

During the summer of the next turn, however, word came that Western Hold was attacked by the “pale folk”, though the attack was supposedly driven back by the combined forces of the Hold and Dalibor Weyr. Though worries and fears of these strange people were on the lips of customers and his Apprentices, Dijhay himself wasn’t very concerned… he’d heard about them only twice now in the fifteen Turns he had been living in Crescent Hold, so he figured they clearly did not represent any large threat to him. That very winter, however, something much more dangerous reared its ugly head… a massive winter storm, known among the Holdfolk as the “Storm of All Passes”, devastated the region, killing crops and severley reducing the sizes of local herdbeast herds. While Dijhay and everyone he knew survived (though it was far from comfortable), he made sure to watch his stores of leather, knowing that with the herd loss, the next few turns might be much tighter on hide supplies, so he’d best not waste any materials… which meant his usual use of dragonmauled hides for his personal practice had to stop, as every scrap of leather was now more precious than before.

Turn 11P12 saw the “pale folk” completely eliminated, proving Dijhay’s lack of worry about the amount of threat they posed to Crescent, and during the spring of the 13th Turn of the Pass, Thread began to fall very erratically… and while Dijhay was as glad as anyone for the break, he did wonder when the other shoe would drop.

That other shoe dropped with a vengeance come summer, as a massive Threadfall devastated the entire continent. While there were definitely losses, it wasn’t anyone Dijhay knew well, and the riders of Dalibor kept things under control as best they could. In the aftermath, however, stories filtered through the Hold about how hard the East was hit, and Dijhay put an even tighter lock on their leather supplies, fearing what the losses of so many established Eastern herdbeast herds could do to the global hide supply.

The summer of the next Turn brought news from Tillek… his father had passed away in his sleep, and his mother, seeming unable to adapt to living without her husband, passed a couple sevendays later. While Dijhay was certainly saddened by their loss, their age and declining health had given him plenty of Turns to prepare, so he simply buried himself in his work rather than mourn, as was his way. Autumn saw a story of strange creatures brought by the Beasthall to Dalibor, though thankfully they were destroyed before they escaped to cause further harm, and only a few Beasthall Apprentices were slain, meaning the still-recovering herdbeast herds would not be set back any further. In addition, there was a huge fuss as the Lord Holder of Crescent passed away… he hadn’t had any personal interactions with the man, and barely knew his name, so it didn’t concern him overmuch… Dijhay would obey the rulings of whatever rich noble replaced him, and the world would continue to turn uninterrupted.

The summer of the next turn saw a celebration in the Hold as a new Lord and Lady Holder, Callum and Paasha, were installed in Crescent, though as with the loss of the previous Lord Holder, Dijhay didn’t take much notice, as one rich noble was the same as another to someone in his position.